Gaps Between Words
by handschuhmaus
Summary: As a half-blood apprentice, he's beginning to gain a footing in a society that might just undergo a seismic shift. He's also trying to puzzle out Lily the enigma and do something about all the killings. Sequel to "These Lonely Hands"


Welcome to "Gaps Between Words", the sequel to "These Lonely Hands" (The last chapter of which is due to undergo a bit of revision before posting as I'm not quite satisfied with it.) Also trying for specific word counts in this, I think. Alternatively titled "Behind Our Hands"

_A/N: Firstly, a disclaimer, I don't own Lily, Sev, or any other characters you recognize, much as I would like to. Secondly, a few words on the prospects for this second installment. The mood is to be different from "These Lonely Hands." Time has elapsed (though I tend to fumble time and had to make a correction from my original version of the Girls Who Play Guitars drabble (that would be the first one—they're in order.))—about a year and a month, placing this installment two years after the "Signal and Sign/Apply Some Pressure" chapter of "These Lonely Hands." Also, they meet on different standing. Lily is married; Severus is out of school and now only must answer to his master (as an apprentice—in this alternate universe, he did not join up with Voldemort) and his sponsor. Though the last installment of TLH is _still_ giving me grief, I fully expect GBW to be a bit more difficult to write, because I've been listening to _Our Earthly Pleasures _on end since the end of March, and whilst "familiarity" has not yet "[led] to contempt", I don't notice the lyrics quite as much despite knowing them, and sometimes struggle at finding a theme. "Our Velocity", which is the second half of this chapter, gave me much grief this way. A large part of the reason is that this is _not_ related to _Doctor Who_; the show exists in this universe but isn't relevant, and because it's the song that introduced me to Maximo Park through vortexguyz934 's Doctor Tribute, the song is inexorably linked to the Doctor in my mind. Other songs, "Karaoke Plays" and "Nosebleed" remind me of Michigan for personal reasons, which may cause further difficulty in those chapters, but I think they will be a bit easier than "Our Velocity". _

"Hello, Sev."

"Hello, Lily."

"Why don't you sit down, have a drink?" she suggested, smiling timidly at him.

Her fiery curls hung about her face to flatter her, and practically burst from the tie that held them. Her green eyes were still brilliant, and he thought the dress might be new, but couldn't say, because he hadn't seen her for several months. She had moved from their town, she had gotten married to James Potter in a grand affair.

She seemed calmer, a bit more mature. They were in the Leaky Cauldron now—they hadn't seen each other in quite some time, and she was drinking butterbeer. He drank greedily from a mug of now-cold tea as he sat beside her.

"How have you been?" he asked, and earnestly wanted to know, even though he was not generally much hand at small talk.

"I tried to get into St. Mungo's training program, but James stopped me. He wants babies."

"Oh."

Her smile broadened at that response. She liked James, or loved him, and he could not greet the man with any positive emotion, though he would probably try for her. He thought so.

"You should have seen Sirius the other day—he—oh, he was teasing the neighbor's dog so, and Peter—" she had begun to laugh so that she could not speak properly, and he liked to see that, hadn't see it in some time, but he had grimaced at the talk of the Marauders, and she broke off.

"How are you getting along? With Pot-James, I mean?" he asked, giving her a nervous half-smile and showing his crooked teeth.

Her resumed smile (she had given him a disappointed look when she had broken off) was wistful, an effort she didn't mean, but she said only "Fine, fine."

And then she spoke for a few minutes about her in-laws, and her former yearmates, who she was still in contact with (he wasn't), and their house at Godric's Hollow, and then about whether the Sorting Hat was always accurate. He didn't interrupt.

"Look, Sev, I have to go, 'right?"

* * *

><p>It was later, over a cauldron, that he contemplated that odd, largely one-sided reunion. His thoughts strayed; he looked away from the leaves he was slicing deftly into the required chiffonade, and pondered Lily and how she had broken off with him, just when he thought maybe he'd mended the rift that he'd torn in between them in fifth year.<p>

He did not have long to wonder about that—the bell over the shopdoor tinkled, despite its being decidedly after hours and the shop was graced with the presence of the quite conceited Lucius Malfoy.

"Snape," the man addressed him uncomfortably.

"What is it you require?" he asked, all the while reciting procedural instructions in his head. Turn the heat up on the cauldron, stir six times, add the fern and the may-apple…

"What if—" Malfoy began in grandiose fashion, "I were to ask you to make a very special potion—"

He cut the arrogant blond off. "Cut to the chase, Malfoy. What special potion, why do you want it for, and who's paying me?"

Malfoy in turn, sniffed in a prissily feminine manner, and drawled in horror, "How can you afford to ask so many questions, Snape? It's not as if that's a wizard's name."

He stirred the required sixteen times anti-clockwise and dropped in the shaved hemlock root—two and one-twelfth ounces. "While it may be—" Severus rejoined with equal pomposity, but coldly, "as you say, that I am a half-blood, I can full well afford to declare that superior to your benighted pureblood state. The Princes are well-moneyed and older than the Malfoys, as you well know."

He had flabbergasted Malfoy. "Rubbish!" the older man finally spat. "Do you not realize that no one dares refuse Lord Vol—the Dark—our Master?"

"The only master I serve is my sponsor, Malfoy. Get thee hence from the shop before I most inconveniently recall it's after hours."

Lucius, in turn, as dimwitted as always, did not spot the veiled insult, much as he hadn't spotted the folly in his so-called master's program, and only stamped out.


End file.
